Or you put solar in Spain/Italy/Portugal and take the electricity from there and turbines alongside the major mountain ranges of Europe… like could do both
Yea, I don’t think Peter has quite run the numbers properly and just thinks if it isn’t like California or Arizona, they just don’t work. I have solar on my house here in California and it produces 3x the daily energy I use in the summer and about 50% in the winter. And that includes my EV charging. Glad to hear it can work outside the US Sunbelt.
He's not talking about your electric bill you belgian Waffle, he's talking about. . . nvm go watch the video again, you obviously weren't paying attention
I had a reef aquarium that required measuring light in variously areas with a PAR meter and it opened my eyes to how much people stink at judging light intensity. Our eyes normalize everything so we can see. I think that's part of it. If you can barely tell the difference between 100 and 1000 you can't judge solar panel placement intuitively.
It’s your damn iris making automatic adjustments without telling your conscious mind how much it’s opening up or closing down. If we had some sort of read out, we could get accurate measurements from the eye. (You’d probably need to get your eyes calibrated periodically.)
I'm an engineer and that's actually a really great observation based on *actual data gathering.* As an engineer I encounter way to many people who think opinions are more important than conclusions based on actual observed data and verified information and gathered experience. This is one of the things I find so frustrating these days as an engineer. There's a 1000 voices in the room all screaming at the top of their lungs and whatever reason and logic is there to be heard just gets drowned out in the cacophony.
@@MarcosElMalo2 @MarcosElMalo2 it's a little more than that, since the individual neurons relaying signals from the rods and cones in our eye add pretty decent dynamic range within a particular scene and also adapt from scene to scene. The whole system is aimed at creating a functional picture in a wide variety of light intensities. The human eye and brain are capable of seeing in a range of light intensities separated by a factor of 10 billion, so measuring the degree of pupil dilation wouldn't allow us to very accurately tell where on that scale we were. Also pupil dilation at any particular light intensity varies by age and with emotional or chemical stimulation of the sympathetic/parasympathetic nervous system balance.
@@tonywilson4713 Same here. I can remember when engineers were respected, but I'm old. It may be a function of social media or watching UA-cam videos that make everything look easy. I'm guessing though, I don't know. I have found that in order to understand the Green movement I first had to realise that it's a religion. Belief beats logic and reality (up to a point). Read the comments here - a sizeable percentage of them are talking about how wonderful solar is! It's very frustrating and pointless utterly talking to them. A few years of being cold will sharpen the fools minds though. All the best Tony. 👍
Only speaking for myself here but: 1. My solar power system was made in the USA (inverters, panels, batteries) 2. I live in Florida with lots of sun and it will pay for itself ($22,000 DIY) 3. The "transmission" distance from my panels to my usage is about 100' 4. I went with solar to be self sufficient
@Glen Spivey Its hard to say exactly as utility rates continue to climb and part of our power savings is from conservation. I would guess about 12-15 years total. We are already 6 years in so maybe 8 more years. That said, saving money or the environment is not the primary goal.
Final assembly may be done in the US, but the really dirty components are typically made in china. And while I do understand why people go offgrid, economics, reliability etc, it is ultimately a politically caused problem and poeple going offgrid is sadly a net negative for the environment.
I think one major appeal to solar is that it is utilizing current unused space like rooftops and they financial payout is realistic on solar being you can install a system for 15k. Wind on the other hand is a bit more ugly and most home owners don’t want a windmill in their backyard. Granted I am coming from a homeowners perspective and not a mass project prospective but that is why I am drawn to solar more.
Wind depends. With small permanent magnet generation system using vertical axis turbines that generate electricity at lower wind speeds, a lot of advancements are being made. I used to live in a house in which we wired up a 12 volt lighting system, and a system like this would have made a lot of sense. We could also have scaled up a little and had an inverter to run a wash machine and other stuff.
On a solar farm, panels are professionally maintained. On residential rooftop installations, maintenance is at the whim of the home owner. Leaves in the fall? The constant accumulation of dust and pollen reduce efficiency. Can the homeowner maintain the panels or do they have to hire someone. In either case, there's the possibility of deferred maintenance. If there is no maintenance, by Year 7, there efficiency is basically down to nothing.
one thing to consider is that wind and solar complement each other in terms of seasonal power generation. solar tends to do better in the summer, wind tends to do better in the winter. so coupled they sort of even out power production over the year.
Doesn't counter his killer point that solar is usless at night, even in summer. Even on just seasonal they don't even out at any given location - Towards the poles peak power demand is for heat during the winter & towards the equator it is for air conditioning almost all of the time but especially during the summer. Fossil fuels and nuclear are equally efficient day or night, summer or winter.
@@SmileyEmoji42 Sure, solar could be useless at night but isn't at the moment. Solar complements hydro diurnally as solar complements wind seasonally. Of course one can argue that electricity isn't consumed correctly at the moment with an unnecessary decrease in demand at 23-07 that isn't reflected in the supply of nuclear (or any other thermal) plants and wind parks. But I don't entirely like that argument.
@@mattihalme81 Your "complementary" technologies are not, in fact complementary. Pumped hydro is not and never can be big enough to smooth out any significant amount of solar production. There are very few suitable locations compared to the worlds population distribution and powre usage. Wind does have some seasonal variation but that isn't the problem. Whilst the sun will rise every single day there can be days, weeks or even months without any significant win at all.
Solar works just fine in the UK and in Germany. With home-solar there are zero transmission losses, and the network as a whole is more stable due to excess power being fed back in, as well as being more resilient. Solar water heaters are also popping up like mushrooms on roofs all over the EU. Then factor in that many southern EU households can easily power their entire homes most of the year from solar, and it's undeniably useful, both economically as well as strategically.
The Germans have built 200% solar/,wind capacity of the PEAK consumption, and yet manage to only get under 50% utilization. They still need natgas plants, this is why they are in a pickle. Hundreds of billions spent. Had that money gone into nuclear, the Germans would be able to heat every home with electricity and still export power to other countries. Every northern country that has implemented a FIT program for solar and wind has caused electrical rates to go up even higher. The truth is what comes out of people's pockets.
"With home-solar there are zero transmission losses, and the network as a whole is more stable due to excess power being fed back in" Networks are less stable when excess is being fed back when peak generation is already happening. I imagine there are zero transmission losses when there is zero generation though.
The problem with wind (and advantage of solar) is that you can't really efficiently downsize it. So personal wind turbines (while already available) will always be much less efficient than big size wind turbines. So if you want a bit of independency from the grid, solar (combined with a battery) is usually looking better than wind.
No advantage at all. Solar is not realistic for individual because the moment everybody would want it the price would shoot up and the availability simply would not b viable.
Solar can only the scaled to the anticipated need and the available daylight. A .5m panel to power an external light in a north state is fine. Try to power a refrigerator, a water heater, a space heater, and a computer or two in winter. The size of the solar panels needed would cover several rooftops at least.
thinking that powering a home and storing overnight is beneficial ecologicaly or economicaly for the individual or society is a bit desilusionnal (except in a weird place where the cost of electricity would go absurdely high). It's a bit like when Mao ordered every subject to produce iron in their back yard, the productivity was low and the quality abyssmal. "electricaly independent homes" imply subpar solar exposure in most individual cases ( except if one live in an arid place with a full south roof with perfect angling for your lattitude and no masking) and a gigantic waste of materials for the stationnary battery that is not used for vehicles. So no th"problem" with wind is not a problem it's the logical evolution for economies of scale and reaching new wind "deposits".
Rooftop solar is actually pretty great. It makes no noise, kills no birds, shields the building from heat, doesn't spoil the view, imposes no transmission costs and is maintenance-free for decades. In combination with a home battery it can reduce peak power that the grid must be layed out for. The carbon dioxide associated with the production of solar panels is offset in three years - and even sooner where they replace coal-generated power. In short, rooftop solar is an excellent complement to the, indeed amazing, wind turbines we are currently peppering the North Sea with.
I’m living on the sunny west coast of Ireland, the charge going into my Nissan Leaf is equal to the charge coming from the solar voltaic panels on my roof as we speak, it’s 11.12am, I got a government grant for the panels. And one of the windiest countries in the world.
The oceans have no wind blockage and in places it never stops blowing. Solar has problems but they I think are solvable. I retired from the local power company (Orlando Florida) . They are moving to solar farms and in the process of retiring the coal fire units. Combine cycle plants are used at night and at peak load. This is going to be a step by step process. And multiply solutions will be used.
And after all is said and done, will the grid be more robust or more fragile? I really don't know but I am skeptical that "renewables" will ever cover base load.
@@gomertube The grid is a connected to many generation stations. None of them are really 100 percent reliable. But together they are reliable. As soon as the power storage problem is solved and it will be, too much money to be made not to, the age of fossil fuels will be over.
@@stephencullum8255 I think that one of Peter's key points was that renewables simply aren't viable in many regions of the world, especially when transmission costs are considered. Those places will always need either fossils or nukes. Maybe there'll be a market in FL, but even where I live in the panhandle my municipality has 30 days a year without solar power generation. 30 days is long enough time to kill us all off!
Who thinks we should put solar panels where it isn’t sunny? I live in LA where it’s almost always sunny and you can barely find solar panels anywhere. Also, our peak energy consumption is in the middle of the afternoon when the air conditioning is running full blast…because it’s sunny.
The Germans and Canadians and many others in Europe etc. seem to think that it's a good idea to put solar panels in high lattitude countries (weaker daylight strength, long cold winters with very short days). These are some of the situations that can technically repay the financial cost of installing solar panels, but are probably not offsetting the initial carbon cost of production over their lifetime.
@@davidbarry6900 no i did not watch his video. i just write some random comments here. just because zaihan says something that is not necessarily proof that it is fact.
You’re absolutely right about wind. I’m in touch with several mechanics who work on wind turbines. Usually they are installed where the wind analysis tells where the most sustainable wind speeds will be and usually top of mountains are the best spots and they are not using agricultural lands. Unfortunately a wind turbine is huge and there is no way for a helicopter to get it up a mountain. So they must dig an very large access road especially for the swithbacks. And then they have to clear up the land to 100 meters around the designated spot for the crane. The amount of money invested in the road should access a lot of wind turbines for financial amortization. So when we install 20 or 30 wind turbines on a top of a mountain, it’s an environmental disaster at first. Then you must know that there are mechanical issues each week for a group of more than 20 turbines and sometimes the oil contained in the head leaks a lot so there’s another disaster. The oil on the top of the mountain gets into the springs and you know the rest of the story. You’re actually in a pristine location, imagine that the government tells you that they will install wind turbines in the sierras !!!!! 😮 That is what is happening in a lot of places in North America. Be safe and appreciate the tops of our mountains before it’s too late.
Clean coal, nuclear, natural gas and renewable were it is easy could really make a large difference for many countries. That should have been Germanys' approach but in doing that they would not have had as much success with their manufacturing but they may have then focused on high end value manufacturing that is hard to achieve but the Germans could have done it.
Older wind turbines use a decent amount of oil for their hydraulic systems, that’s why you see oil leaking out of those old turbines. Even the older turbine components however have long lifespans. The gearbox oil of most turbines has a lifespan of 10 years if filtered properly. It sucks filtering all that oil because it’s time intensive but thought and care has been invested into using as little oil as possible. A lot of early WTG designs that were used in the 00’s were actually engineered in the 80’s, maintenance is far more streamlined on newer towers, they’re run using electric motors instead of hydraulic systems. There are 50 7.2 MW Turbines being installed in a park south of where I work. The peak output of the park will be about 360 MW and run by 8 or so techs. The park I work at has 240 WTG’s and our peak is 400MW and it takes about 30 of us plus contractors to keep them running. The advancements over the last decade have been staggering. Those 7.2 MW turbines use a fraction of the oil our 1.65 turbines do, and where it is used it generally is very long lifespan lubricant. Also an environmental assessment is conducted yearly at most parks, if you’re leaking that much oil, you made a huge mistake, and you’re going to get clobbered by the EPA in fines. The oil we pull from towers also has a chain of custody and it is processed and recycled. Of course burning coal and oil is several orders of magnitude more damaging to the environment and humans need energy, so you gotta make tradeoffs. It certainly doesn’t mean the industry isn’t innovating or trying to do better, however.
@@riley8929 Yes you’re totally right, there will always tradeoffs. I visited as a physicist Langley tokamak in the 90s. At that time the pledge for making energy from nothing was strong. But now with the international energy race, maybe we’ll see some important discoveries that will change the world forever, for the good or the worse. Take care.
That reminds me of a funny story. I'm a civil engineer, who used to work in wind energy back in the 1990s. For the past 20 years I've been working for engineering consulting firms, mainly in transport and municipal engineering. Around 15 years ago our firm had a contract with a promoter developing a wind-farm who asked us to estimate the BOP cost (balance of plant, in other words, all the access roads, collection system, foundations, etc.). The wind farm was under tender, and because it was a lump sum tender, the promoter needed us to estimate the cost of the BOP so they could evaluate if the tenders were fair. So this meant that we had to estimate over 100 kilometers of gravel access roads in less than a month, and do it without contacting anyone about the project (because it was under tender). One of the wind turbines was sited at the summit of a steep hill, that was almost a small mountain. I had no idea how to estimate that site, so I made the assumption that the peak of the hill would be dynamited to create a flat platform large enough that there was enough room for all the cranes installing the turbines, and the dynamited rock would be crushed and used to make ramps and other access roads. It was a fast-track project, so we didn't have time to think too much about it, and I assumed that the eventual contractor would find a more intelligent solution. About a year later, when the wind farm was under construction, I ran across the promoter and asked him how the contractor solved the problem of the turbine at the peak of the steep hill. He told me the contractor dynamited the upper third of the hill to create a flat platform, and crushed the dynamited road to make ramps and access roads, just as we had estimated it. I guess sometimes the dumbest solutions are the best.
I wasn't going to listen when I first saw the email, glad I did. I've got one thing on my list right now, run accross Mr. Thomas on an RV'ing trip. I'm now adding another: running across Mr. Zeihan on an off-trail hike. Thanks for thinking of the view...beautiful.
The attraction of solar is individuals can generate enough to power their own home and store in batteries overnight. At the micro level, wind is only a supplement not an alternative.
Speaking from well north of the US border, I will give you the attraction, but with the caveat that it is only cost effective if you forgo grid tie completely (rural or remote properties) and have no need for heavy currents to do work, things like say welding, machinery, even ventilation for barns. On the other hand, if you just need intermittent lighting for an outbuilding you can save a fortune compared to trenching and laying cable.
Like real estate, wind power is dependent on location, location, location. You can store wind energy in batteries as well as ener4gy from solar panels.
Wind is also location dependent, and it depends how you do it. There seems to be a lot of micro scale advancement with vertical axis wind turbines using permanent magnet generators that will create power at much lower speed than larger scale wind turbines. That seems pretty promising. If you have a 12 volt system with an inverter, wind may be a good solution for a low power setup. But again, your mileage (based on tech and location) may vary.
What you call an attraction I call a crutch. Humanity lived quite well before the invention of electricity and all of the now assumed necessary gadgets. I've lived in homes that experienced regular 42C highs without electricity and have been perfectly comfortable. More comfortable, in fact, than I am in what most consider vastly more luxurious digs. People have been dumbed down to such a degree they can no longer function without their so-called "conveniences". They are completely unaware what was given up in this transformation. An analogy that comes to mind is the person who has the requisite knowledge, skills and abilities to cook a simple hamburger from real and fresh ingredients. That person is unlikely to see a McDonald's hamburger as food. It's food-like. I can come up with many more examples of how modern "conveniences" are in fact merely whitewashed iterations of cheap plastic knockoffs.
Domestic solar energy is minimal and the amount of batteries, solar panels and wiring/switching that has to be done just makes no sense. It simply is not a good alternative to micro level anything.
A friend of mine worked for a NGO in Africa..they used solar and wind power generators they worked for small projects ..but that’s it . You can’t run a steel mill or anything of an industrial scale to provide an efficient electricity to grow an economy. Renewables are stop gaps ..period .
Actually, almost everything he said, and this is wrong. For example, peak energy at night? No! Peak energy is during the daytime when businesses and corporations are running. It’s why the power company actually gives you incentives to do things like laundry at night. It’s lotta power from your local power company is cheaper at night. Peter got so much wrong in this video. He is not an energy expert. And this video is exhibit one! What we should be doing is using natural gas as we transition into nuclear. Then 50 to 100 years in our nuclear will be replaced by something else. When solar or ancient technology. They’ve been around forever. They’re great small scale at the micro level, but not at the macro.
Like your videos but would like to see reference's to the numbers on the Solar carbon footprints. Solar on my house charges my battery, for 9 months of the year it powers the house 24 hours a day, including A/C in the summer (Spain so its hot) The panels will be there for 20+ years, that is about 220 MWh of electricity. From what I can Google that's approximately 95 tons of Co2 avoided.
I question the environmental catastrophe that Peter claims PV manufacture can be. He did say "if done wrong", but literally anything can be an environmental catastrophe if done wrong enough.
@@incognitotorpedo42 If done well, solar panels have merely a large carbon footprint. If done in typical less-developed countries (where most are actually made), they have a very large carbon footprint.
Nice background - Peter says, "Wind is great." There certainly is a mystique about the great sailing ships of the past. "And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by; And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking, And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking." Some day they may write poetry about old wind generators. I think the options that can be built any where and take little space will overtake wind in the next iteration.
The important thing to look at is the slope of trend lines. Costs for solar are continuing to drop. Recyclability is continuing to improve. As are efficiencies. We continue to see ROIs drop allowing smaller installations to become more interesting as well as less sunny geographies. Batteries are improving incredibly fast and the storage and grid stabilization benefits are becoming attractive. Highly distributed generation is helpful for both reliability and reduction in line loss. We are right in the middle of a significant technological transformation and technology and capital allocation is still being sorted. So it is a bit unfair to dismiss solar in the middle of a massive transformation. It’s like dismissing computers when the digital age was just getting started in the 60s and 70s.
Bingo. Many people criticize the use of battery electric vehicle as being carbon-intensive (thus bad for the environment). It's certainly true. However, as you say, "slope of the trend line" says that electric batteries are rapidly becoming eco-friendly, even if they're not there yet. Internal combustion is a mature technology, it can only improve marginally. But BEVs, much like solar, are emerging technologies: as they quickly improve, they will become beneficial in the future, even though they're polluting right now.
Looking at trends lines is kind of a red herring. The biggest drop in cost per unit of solar is from economies of scale when China entered the production market for both panels and batteries. That has some pretty big drawbacks. They're literally what the video is about. There are other reasons that cost per unit dropped, but they're dwarfed by that one factor. It's not that this is a completely invalid way of looking at the market, its just that when the contexts of why are stripped out its misleading to the point of being counterproductive. There are some genuine improvements in performance and production but they are still nascent and looking at trend lines alone will lead to incorrect conclusions.
Except when you back check the trend lines and see that the cost curves are holding which they are. Chinese labour is no longer cheap. Lowest labour cost geographies are now Vietnam Cambodia and Bangladesh. Low labour cost provides value when you are at small to medium scale. But once you get to massive scale only automation can create an acceleration to lower cost. At massive scale, labour cost becomes less important as cost lines approach closer to raw materials and transportation costs. This is where we are now with solar panels. Chinese labour costs are becoming a non issue though yes they had an impact at first.
Also I think that Peter does a lot of business with oil companies. I’m not sure he’s really current with the state of solar and batteries from both an economical and two perspective or if he’s even aware of the current scale of deployment which is becoming massive.
Fact check this please. Multiple sources cite LCA's conducted on PV panel embodied energy paypack suggest anywhere from 1.5 - 7 year payback depending on location and methodology. Call it a pessimistic 10 years and that is still 1/3 their projected lifetime. That includes the northern latitudes such as in the UK. I think Peter might have got this one wrong.
yes, worst of all he keeps regurgitating this. it is like he has a vested interest by the fossil industry to repeat that propaganda. now i would think before spouting things he look into it a bit more than just repeating.
Case in point. I have some solar panels that I used to put in my windows to charge phones, batteries etc. Then I moved to Northern Scotland. I get about 3 hours of medium serviceable sunlight per day for charging, in ONE window, and only at the height of the WINTER.... because the sun comes in practically horizontally first thing in the morning, as the sun doesnt get very high during the day. Anyone using solar up here frankly needs them on a gimble, like a radar dish, tracking the sun, and even then you will get poor performance. There are, however, wind turbines EVERYWHERE. There are about twenty scattered around the vicinity of my town and Im in the middle of nowhere.
I lived in Ravensthorpe in SW Western Australia. Solar and wind were always on song. Had to move back to Perth, but solar here is brilliant. Where I live wind would be great too, but the noise would likely annoy the neighbors 😕
In hot places, it is sunny when it is the hottest. When AV blows full blast. You are the one mentioning that before so I don’t understand why now the argument go a 180 turn 😂
I agree. After 40 years in the electric utility industry, the deep geothermal proposed by Quaise looks like the most promising solution to reliable carbon-free energy.
@@davekral7274 Unless one of the non-Tokamak fusion projects manages to short-cut to a commercial fusion solution, such a geothermal is really the only new, feasible option. Fingers crossed 🙂
@@cabanford Even if that miracle did occur, the capital cost of a fusion plant would be so much greater than a geothermal plant it wouldn't be economical.
@@davekral7274 You're thinking of the Tokamak design. There are a bunch of other concepts that use completely different approaches that *might* work far more quickly and cheaply. Give the scene a quick Google search if you're interested
Just throwing in a fun fact: Despite the popular perception that Texas is politically not a let's say "greentech-embracing" state, especially considering much of its GDP comes from oil & gas, it has by far the most number of wind turbines in the U.S. It's current count is around 17,000! While the second-most number is Iowa at around 7,000.
Though you say solar can never be part of peak demand, you seem to have forgotten about air conditioning. In the sunbelt, solar power generation dovetails almost perfectly with the demand for air conditioning. The electrical utilities certainly understand this, hence the development of huge solar arrays. Regardless, great job on the video!
Wind and solar or ancient technology. They’re not efficient. And they’re not green. They are not net green. We should be using natural gas as we transition to nuclear and then 50 to 100 years from now. Something else will replace nuclear. Maybe. There is so much wrong with wind and solar. It’s not even funny. They are great at the micro level at the individual level, but anything even remotely scalable is ridiculous. Peter gets so much wrong in this video. I like the guy, but he’s completely wrong when it comes to power. Go watch some videos with Michael Shellenberger and Robert Bryce.
I've seen this work very well on large temperature controlled warehouses in California. The PV contribution during peak cooling need often makes the building net zero need wrt grid supply, which is a huge coup.
" In the sunbelt, solar power generation dovetails almost perfectly with the demand for air conditioning. " It doesn't really. Peak demand tends to be in the evening when people come home from work. "The electrical utilities certainly understand this, hence the development of huge solar arrays. " Electric utilities understand that they are mandated to have a specific percentage capacity coming from wind or solar in order to avoid being penalized. For a utility, it is more cost effective to have fewer sources rather than switching between sources and having to project how much they'll need on a daily basis.
I would argue that solar still works in those places but not for every application. Like in Boston you can power a single family home (and then some) but yes you can’t power an apartment complex, factory or corporate building.
Hello from Denmark :) The environmental agency is currently investigating pollution pertaining to wind turbine production due to a huge spike in toxic sea foam containing PFAS pollution on the Danish west coast. This is most likely caused by the offshore wind turbines shedding fluoropolymers into the ocean. The findings of this investigation has the potential to be very damaging to the Danish windmill industry. Furthermore, the wind turbines are usually not generating power when it's windy due to bottlenecks in the German transmission grid.
Storage and transmission is the real issue when it comes to wind energy. It really needs to used on a local loads such as factories and so on. The actual maintenance of offshore wind turbines must be insane and a lot of Enron level accounting is probably taking place. You will hear the term peak energy which is a very clever way of saying that they get enough energy for a short period of time that they then present as being the whole time.
The authorities are looking at many potential sources for pfas, therefor also windfarms, but this dosen't mean that there is special expectation of finding high levels of pfas comming from windfarms, as pfas isnt directly used in production. A more likely candidate for pfas in the north sea are wastewater and oilrigs where it is used extensively. On a side note, some solar panels have pfas coatings, but I don't know to what extend it can leak to the environment.
There’s one thing you missed. Solar panels have no moving parts and will last 30+ years with no maintenance. The solar panels on Voyager (which was launched in the 70’s) were still working when we lost contact with it. The best use case for solar is for sub- and ex- urban areas which are highly inefficient to service with a conventional grid. We’re already seeing this in developing parts of Africa and Asia.
They'll be dead in 7 years without maintenance. You have to clean them regularly, dust, pollen, leaves, etc. Essentially after storms you need to clean them, after long periods of dry weather you need to clean them, to the tune of four or so times a year or more depending on where you live, and you should have them inspected every single year. Just throwing them up and leaving them will cause issues.
@@ZackaryMusgrove Are you the guy that cleans all the mars rovers panels? Imagine washing your car a couple of times a year and calling that maintenance 😂 also they’re not going to die if you don’t clean them, just produce slightly less energy. I have an off grid cabin With panels I haven’t touched in 5 years. They work fine and are relatively clean thanks to a miracle I like to call RAIN!
Solar panels have maintenance, cleaning. If it’s coupled with a battery system, it has lots of maintenance involved. The inverter has maintenance too. Also, every year you’ll lose ~1% efficiency from the panel, even faster in areas where panels operate under hot conditions. Not sure of the exact science of why it happens, but it does. Everything has maintenance, it’s an ongoing battle against entropy since the dawn of time.
@@zinithin-8208 you’re being pedantic. Of course everything degrades over time. What I’m saying is the tiny degradation they experience over time seems miraculous when compared to other mechanical systems like wind turbines. Can you point to any wind turbines that are still operating after 50 years of no maintenance?
future of solar is thin film. doesn't require smelting silicon ingots. costs a fraction of traditional silicon. multijunction & perovskites pushing 40% efficiency in lab. peter is a couple years behind the curve on his solar tech knowledge. still only works in daylight though, he right about that.
I've seen a lot of progress on that from the Aussies, but still Peter is correct when taking about the prevalent technology, and how China hoovered up that entire market for it's state champion businesses. Will they do the same for tech developed down under? IDK. Still lets hope it all ends up scaling up as well or better than the prevailing silicon tech has.
Thanks Peter! 🙏🎄 New fan , pushing your popularity up another fraction 😂. I have learned so much about our planet from your knowledge and perspective on other channels. Really appreciate your insight and effort. 😎 Merry Christmas from Aussie Downunder 🎄
There is usually more wind at night, and obviously more sun during the day. But the world rotates, and Northern and Southern hemispheres face the sun periodically. I can put Solar panels on my roof, and a Battery Megapack by the side of my house, BUT I can't really put a 200 ft. Wind-mill by the side of my house. There is talk of Geothermal energy, being inexhaustible, and now accessible. But holes in the ground that deep, can quite easily become Volcanoes. I still believe in Solar personally, but topping up with Wind power. Britain at the moment building the biggest wind farm on the Dogger Bank in the middle of the North sea. No environmental impacts, and it's far enough away to be almost invisible, and ships know enough to keep away from the Dogger Bank ! Looks like a win-win situation. Ther we can all get free power for our electric vehicles, using under-road wireless charging systems,(the same system that our phones use, but larger).
Classic wind power also doesn't work in most of the big city locations due to disturbance in the wind flow. Transmission and storage are key issues. The copper requirement will become an issue for wind turbines regardless. Lets also not forget those Wind turbine blades are not recyclable, use toxic epoxies, and are HUGE.
That is not true. Wind turbines on top of buildings, along with other structures have been showing improved output year after year. Cost is another thing, but it is certainly doable with enough investment. The technology is there.
@@wilhelmheinzerling5341 Your ignorance is glaring. What do you know of laminar air flow and the how reliant horizontal access wind turbines are on it? Any idea why so much effort is being put into alternative forms of vertical axis wind power generators? It's specifically because of the disruption to wind flow caused by urban landscapes. Read a little. The DETAILS matter.
Wind blades are recyclable, it just costs more than the return gained. so no one does it. Currently the #1 way blades are "recycled" is to burn them as fuel for concrete production, reducing emissions as much at 27% and recovering the energy put into the manufacturing. The fibers can then be seperated, ground, and used as fillers in the same concrete. Currently every OEM for blades are working on thermo-plastic blades- for recycling. Epoxy and polyesters are thermo-set plastics (cant be remelted and reformed) so separating the materials is very energy intensive.- Either ovens or chemical baths. Denver has a national laboratory that is building prototypes with this resin (called Arkema Elium) There's some stock advice for ya!
Solar works in remote locations, if you have natural gas to run the refrigerator and stove, plus regular gas for the water pump. Then you still need quite a bit, even fit basic lights and a few electronics.
@@kokofan50 Here in the U.K., landowners related to politicians have been major beneficiaries of substantial grants for years, a former P.M.'s father for instance......
Bullseye, let’s get on with repowering existing coal/oil/gas/(manure?) fueled generators with thorium molten salt reactors. They can consume existing nuclear waste and reduce its half-life significantly, solving multiple problems simultaneously. Their off-peak power can be diverted to producing clean hydrogen or desalination of water. Nothing to not like. Oh, and did I mention the production of medical isotopes?
I'm officially jealious...you're doing it...and fair play to you. You're a great role model....just for the record, someone should say it to you. Love the analysis and the views...can't wait of the holiday channel.
The carbon footprint of wind is in the pylons and posts and lines, and the intermittancy which means it has to ALWAYS be backed up by gas generators. you are talking about 70,000 tons piles to anchor the turbines in the sea.
There is an older use for solar power that does not require high tech such as electronics. A couple of decades ago, the US government was offering subsidies to people installing solar heating panels on their roofs. My brother took advantage of this for his building in the suburbs of boston [not a particularly sunny place]. It was basically a large black box full of black pipes, cold water went in one pipe, and preheated water went out another to the building's hot water tank. The energy saving was not in the panels, but in reducing the energy required to heat the water in the tank. During non-sunny days the effect was minimal, but during sunny days the saving was noticeable, and my brother noted substantial savings from mid Spring to mid Autumn. In hot, sunny places like the Middle East, water tanks on the roof produce water hot enough to make tea, and an egg can be cooked on the metal surface of a car left in the sun. If the purpose of solar collectors is to reduce the effects of burning fossil fuels on the environment, reducing the use of fossil fuels and electricity from fossil fuels to heat water seems advisable.
Two-stage geothermal appears to be making a lot of progress in making small-scale power generation accessible without polluting, killing wildlife, or taking up vast tracts of land. It also allows geothermal power to exist away from the normal requisite hotspots, and has the advantage of being active 24/7. I'm very interested in this.
I just listen to a Podcast (Nate Hagen's The Great Simplification), where they discussed Deep Geothermal as a potential to be a truly renewable resource. It's not intermitent, like wind and solar and it wouldn't require new panels/turbines every 15-25 years, like wind and solar. The problem is we don't have the tech to drill that deep, but we are getting close and the largest drilling companies in the world are heavily investing in it. It has a lot of potential and hopefully we'll be able to get it operational and beginning scaling it this decade.
There’s very few places in the world where it would be feasible to do, if at all. You can only drill so far down into the ground which is a pretty big capital investment.
@@senhox970 Currently, you are correct. We are restricted by geography, however, a ton of drilling companies are investing in building the tech to drill miles into the earths crust. They believe that capability will come online this decade. When that happens, the geographic restrictions go away, as we'll be able to drill deep enough to tap into Geothermal anywhere on earth. Don't take my word on it though. Listen to an expert on this podcast - www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/38-sebastian-Heitmann. Specificallly, you can fast forward to the 41st minute and that's where they get into the specifics.
I live I South Australia and we have some days where the whole state is powered by renewable energy. Both solar and wind work very well here! But we've been at it for more than 25 years! Time is the next thing to talk about Peter...
It is not done at the moment, due to engeniring challenges. The mass of water is rough to handle for the equipment. Most experiments of this sort are done at the irkney islands. You can find a few videos abozt that here at youtube.
As far as I understand it, there are only a few tidal power plants in existence because the locations that make them efficient are very rare in the world.
Perovskite technology will change the solar equation in the near future. Perovskite cells are more efficient and cost only a fraction of what silicon does, both in engergy cost and materials required. It is going to be exciting.
We put in a 17kW solar system at home. Did a ground mount because we have very little south facing roof. We use the power here for the house, and only if/when production is over what the house can use does it go out to the grid (and we have net-metering). That said, we didn’t do for environmental reasons. It was strictly a hedge on rising power costs. Edit - I’m at 48.5N latitude. And we refused to sign up until the payments were equal or less than the power they offset.
surprised to not hear mention of storage; it seems to me LiPO batteries quickly dropping to commodity pricing with plug-and-play capabilities; I expect in the future so-called "base" demand will be fulfilled by 'spike supply' as the market gets better at rewarding those who can buy the energy while its cheap and use it while its expensive; it's not an engineering problem to solve the supply vs demand curves being out of sync, its a market one
I think most of the batteries people use for electric storage at homes are just lead acid batteries. Weight to power storage isn’t an issue for a home.
I would pay money to see a discussion (meeting of minds) between you and Tony Seba (RethinkX) on the future of energy production. You are both well versed in the subject, articulate, persuasive, reasonable and diametrically opposed in your conclusions. I think it would be an extremely interesting and enlightening exchange.
I agree I was thinking the same thing as I listened Tony Seba would walk all over Peter Zeihan.I think Peter Zeihan is ignorant about renewables and is googling fossil fuel sites instead of researching
I would actually say doomberg would be an excellent and interesting counter to zeihan on pretty much every issue he raises, and would definetly watch such a debate
@@nickkacures2304 I don’t think it would be a “walk all over”, “WWF smack down” type of event. I suspect each one has an excellent insight into about half of the problem and that a contrasting/comparing/merging of the insights could produce a very clear picture (and hopefully) road map for going forward. At least that’s what I'd like to see.
@@nickkacures2304 Is that the same Tony Seba that promoted self-driving electric cars a few years ago . . . then later said his self-driving car didn't self-drive correctly? There's a major difference between naive theory and real-world practicalities and costs. Zeihan deals with the real world.
@@dzcav3 Peter Zeihan is looking in a rearview mirror in fear as all the wrong predictions and mistakes he keeps making catch up and make a fool of him just look at his last video where he has a jesters hat on it’s a good look.Peter Zeihan a self proclaimed historian but Futerist (HeT)
I wholeheartedly agree with pushing more wind power. There is a completely unfounded hesitancy to adopt wind farms. Additionally, we should be making wind more accessible for personal use, in the same way that solar is.
In the case of Seattle, while the city itself is not particularly sunny the area 100 miles to the east is. If you look at the cost curve on PV solar it is truly remarkable. Cost per watt has dropped 99 percent in the last forty years, and there is every reason to believe that curve will continue until "solar panels" are a coating on metal roofs and cost pennies per watt. It is also reasonable to expect the carbon footprint to decrease along with that cost. From all that it is reasonable to expect that at some time in the not so distant future that PV solar will be the cheapest electricity on the market and also the cheapest electricity in history. Batteries are on a similar but so far less steep cost reduction curve, and again we can reasonably expect that improvement to go on for a few decades at least. Existing wind power is pretty close to cost with modern natural gas generators, and because of economies of scale wind power is likely to get cheaper faster than natural gas.
True, Nordic counties don’t get much sun. In the winter. In the summer our days are 18 h long. Sure, we don’t spend that much power in the summer, but if it allows us to store more water in our hydro power dams, is that not a viable option still?
Days are long in the summer, but the sunlight is still not that strong. This doesn't means solar is useless, but a point I think zeihan gets wrong is when he assumes the average/moderate solar and wind productivity is not enought. He assumes only the best places for solar and wind are good enought, when the moderate productivity is enought to work with.
I understand the tightrope Peter walks being truthful about the realities of green energy. It’s refreshing to hear an influential person who has the ear of policymakers who is brutally honest about the realities of becoming carbon neutral by 2040. I’m convinced that energy rationing is the only way it could happen, and people really don’t understand what that will mean for their quality of life.
These things are just tools in the toolbox. In places wind and solar will provide meaningful and efficient power and in other places they're the wrong tool. We should welcome any technology, well-used, that adds to our toolbox for generating power.
Wow Zeihan this might be my favourite video of yours yet. You're a total inspiration and actually because of seeing your success I've decided to start making videos too! Keep grinding, your hard work clearly pays off!
You're an anti-china conspiracy channel posting nothing new, interesting or original. A 20 something with zero credibility, and after 3 demonetized videos with 300 views, you're already asking people to give you money. You're worse than the Chinese govt.
THANK YOU… a pleasure to hear quick well formed ideas… about something I totally agree with👍🏼. It’s like a little stocking stuffer Xmas morning. You hooked me with an interview on another channel, then your demographics 3 parter and now you got me for good. Thanks. Happy New Year🎉
If you talk about intermittent renewable energy, you should also talk about battery capacity. Hornsdale Australia has a 150 MWh battery, Dilsen-Stokkem Belgium a 800MWh, both integrated into the electricity grid. This size of battery storage allows intermittent renewable power supply to meaningfully add to the electricity base load generation.
No it doesn't, totally cost uncompetitive, hornsdale's purpose is frequency support, not power. The frequency support is needed because wind and solar are terrible for a grid because they can't supply stable Freq. For stable Freq you need a very large spinning mass, inertia is key. You only get that from fossil fuels, fission and hydro.
With consumption in the tens of GW that means 5-10 min of storage. You have to scale up 100 fold just to get above daily intermittency. Just for a single country that means tens of years of the global battery production. We cannot increase the production capacity by even a factor of 5 with the proven reserve of battery materials. Renewables are a scam, to give relief for the climate anxious. EROEI is the most important number for civilizational progress. Nuclear is the only remotely feasible way out of the climate crisis while maintaining energy consumption.
Only problem with wind turbines is they are not Able to be recycled when they break. We need to work on that part. Coming to you from Colorado with quite a bit of wind power here!
If we make better and best into enemies, then there's no limit to what we can prevent ourselves from accomplishing. Why have them compete when they work great together?
You need to include oil&gas, nuclear, coal, hydro, etc. Wind, solar, and battery tech alone will never get us there in an efficient and sustainable way, much less reach our actual overall energy needs - not when the whole picture is considered.
@@ArchimedesPie include nuclear, hydro and others that are small, like geothermal or tide power, but coal,oil and gas are the things we have to get rid of
@Senhox We will never be free of hydrocarbons for all the other things made from them that aren't energy related. A surprisingly high percentage of Oil and Gas (less so for coal) is used in the creation of plastics, pharmaceuticals, lubes, etc. Only a modest percentage is used for fuel. We already create some complex hydrocarbons from biomass, but it's cost prohibitive today. The only practical solution to POWER is nuclear - meaning to generate electricity to run machines, heat homes, and move vehicles, but PRODUCTS will still have to be made from fossil fuels until biomass becomes competitive, either through changes in the supply chains, technology, or scarcity of petrochemicals. Something to remember: the key to the progress of civilization and the end of poverty is the availability of abundant and cheap POWER. This should be one of our primary goals.
@@ArchimedesPie Yes - Germany has used methane both as a fuel source and as a feedstock for its chemical industry. Peter Zeihan has covered how this is impacting the German economy in previous videos. Basically Germany is an overcast and windless place devoid of most natural resources - a lot like Japan.
The world needs storage to make wind/solar intermittency manageable. Things like flow batteries and liquid air power storage are being built out that can store days worth of power when the conditions are good for generation but the power is not immediately needed.
Yes Wind turbines are fit for purpose in more locations. But Wind turbine field service personnel are reporting high maintenance freq and cost to replace the front turbine bearings on the tallest wind turbines… and taller units are most prone to more frequent lightning strikes.
You need to also consider negative sides: maintenace is high, the blades sometimes need changing - that creates env issues - mostly the just dig the pvc in the ground, the noise is high so locals dont like them, they are killing a LOT of birds, and the noise also creates issues for rain deer (and probably other animals too). The biggest problem is that the wind must be just rigth to effectly create power - thats the problem in europe now - not windy - you better have be have a lot of saving or u’ll freeze.
Hunt Energy in Dallas is invested in Cubicpv which is developing a tandem perovskite on silicon cell. Their silicon is from what they call Direct Wafer technology. I posit that when they begin volume production, Altus will buy them for commercial roofs owned or managed by Blackrock and CBRE.
I saw a TED talk about the environmental impact that wind turbines have in California and I was shocked to hear how many birds are killed every year due to wind turbines. Would that not be a factor to consider in their impact?
Peter makes a good point about people not putting windmills where it's not windy, but putting solar panels where it's not sunny. What Peter doesn't mention about wind is that the beautiful scenery that he enjoys so much on his hikes would be RUINED by windmills. And the large birds that soar around the mountains are KILLED by windmills (a federal felony that somehow wind farms are strangely exempt from). Even if the windmills are not directly in sight, if they are nearby, there may well be an ugly, expensive transmission line carrying the electricity from the windmills to where it's needed. Everybody wants green energy until you site a windmill or transmission line in their backyard. There's a saying in the electric utility business that you can't locate energy sources or transmission lines close to any Starbucks coffee shop because the locals will get upset.
There is a social factor that you didn't mention: you can put solar panels on the roofs of buildings and no one has to look at them. The taller a wind turbine gets the more it dominates the landscape. Here in upstate and western New York and likely elsewhere, most of us in our travels have seen the tops of some beautiful hilltops, otherwise wooded and green, become topped off with a line of spinning blades. Nobody wants to see the gorgeous landscapes like the one behind you marred by a string of turbines, but that's where the wind is. Even with the issue of waste storage, nuclear power is still *by far* the best way to go.
...honestly most people don't care it's the Karens that make a big deal about it... I mean if you can save me money by building wind turbines then let's do it economics always wins out in the end even if there is a better product if one can do the job well enough and it costs less then most people will go that route.
I live in Michigan and witnessed a large government subsidized solar farm built in my County. Much grandeur on celebration when it was brought online. It was absolutely hilarious to drive by and see all those solar panels encased in a thick layer of snow and ice.
@@losthighway4840 Yes climb up on a ladder and shovel off those glass solar panels, all 2000 of them. Better yet let's install some diesel fuel smudge pots around it.
@@losthighway4840 Yes you do that. Climb up twelve feet and chip the ice off 600 solar panels when it is five below zero and a twenty mile per hour wind. 🤣🤣💸💸💸💸
I'm not warm to wind or solar because there exists an obvious alternative that is available, but is ignored, that would be reasonable in price, and as safe as it gets, with the good news kicker that there is thousands of years of energy in the form of deposits available here in the US. It's thorium and thorium plants could be built as small as a bedroom, and not be the environmental eyesore that wind and solar are. Besides, wind and solar only last a few years before they are useless blights on the landscape that are difficult to dispose of. Thorium has a much longer lifespan. Wind and solar suck in my opinion.
There are other methods that we can use. No one system is the right one. It depends on where you are. And what is best for that area. The is lots of promise to wave energy. Many cities are near the coast. And the ocean moves all the time. As they improve these systems it could be part of the whole cleaner energy along with other methods being tried.
Two-stage geothermal is a very promising advancement, allowing power generation in places far removed from the traditional hotspots we usually associate with geothermal. In addition, it doesn't pollute, doesn't kill birds, doesn't take up massive tracts of land, and is available 24/7.
Where are you getting your numbers for solar being 5x more expensive than wind?! The numbers I've seen show utlity-scale PV and onshore wind are both around $45/MWh LCOE. Are you talking average installations, or only looking at the ones where it's always cloudy?
Number one polluter (carbon emissions) on planet earth: Portland cement. 660 cubic yards of concrete per turbine on average. Break even for carbon on manufacturing for the average turbine is 30-35 years; service life is 20 years. I’ve installed a couple thousand utility-scale turbines. Sarita Gulf Wind. Red Hills. All over the place. 1500 miles of transmission line. Wind is a sham when making the carbon offset arguement. Nothing green about it. Would love to have you on our show- 180k subs. Holler at me.
Don't forget about the Giant multi hundred ton cement base under each wind turbine, and the birds killed. The average payback for a turbine is 24-26 years....useful life, 18 years. Happy and healthy to you and your family.
@@TSIRNC It still is 234,000 (turbines) vs 2,400,000,000 (house cats) per year. Glass buildings at second place with 599,000,000 per year. Wind turbines aren't really an issue on bird deaths.
What about the problem of dealing with the blades when the wind turbine is decommissioned? Right now they have to be landfilled, and very few places will take them.
In windy places wind is better, in sunny places sun is better, in Germany nuclear is better.
Or you put solar in Spain/Italy/Portugal and take the electricity from there and turbines alongside the major mountain ranges of Europe… like could do both
@@raquetdude a fantastic idea if you dont know anything about Europe
@@raquetdude if you can solve the issue of intermittence you deserve three Nobel price on physics economics and peace
So of course the Germans burn lignite.
@@vinniechan simple solution to intermittence: batteries.... now where is my prize?
Solar panels on my house in the Netherlands, paid off in 2 years thanks to high gas/electricity prices.
Yea, I don’t think Peter has quite run the numbers properly and just thinks if it isn’t like California or Arizona, they just don’t work.
I have solar on my house here in California and it produces 3x the daily energy I use in the summer and about 50% in the winter. And that includes my EV charging.
Glad to hear it can work outside the US Sunbelt.
He's not talking about your electric bill you belgian Waffle, he's talking about. . . nvm go watch the video again, you obviously weren't paying attention
I had a reef aquarium that required measuring light in variously areas with a PAR meter and it opened my eyes to how much people stink at judging light intensity. Our eyes normalize everything so we can see. I think that's part of it. If you can barely tell the difference between 100 and 1000 you can't judge solar panel placement intuitively.
Amen.
It’s your damn iris making automatic adjustments without telling your conscious mind how much it’s opening up or closing down. If we had some sort of read out, we could get accurate measurements from the eye. (You’d probably need to get your eyes calibrated periodically.)
I'm an engineer and that's actually a really great observation based on *actual data gathering.*
As an engineer I encounter way to many people who think opinions are more important than conclusions based on actual observed data and verified information and gathered experience.
This is one of the things I find so frustrating these days as an engineer. There's a 1000 voices in the room all screaming at the top of their lungs and whatever reason and logic is there to be heard just gets drowned out in the cacophony.
@@MarcosElMalo2 @MarcosElMalo2 it's a little more than that, since the individual neurons relaying signals from the rods and cones in our eye add pretty decent dynamic range within a particular scene and also adapt from scene to scene. The whole system is aimed at creating a functional picture in a wide variety of light intensities. The human eye and brain are capable of seeing in a range of light intensities separated by a factor of 10 billion, so measuring the degree of pupil dilation wouldn't allow us to very accurately tell where on that scale we were. Also pupil dilation at any particular light intensity varies by age and with emotional or chemical stimulation of the sympathetic/parasympathetic nervous system balance.
@@tonywilson4713 Same here. I can remember when engineers were respected, but I'm old. It may be a function of social media or watching UA-cam videos that make everything look easy. I'm guessing though, I don't know. I have found that in order to understand the Green movement I first had to realise that it's a religion. Belief beats logic and reality (up to a point). Read the comments here - a sizeable percentage of them are talking about how wonderful solar is! It's very frustrating and pointless utterly talking to them.
A few years of being cold will sharpen the fools minds though.
All the best Tony. 👍
Only speaking for myself here but:
1. My solar power system was made in the USA (inverters, panels, batteries)
2. I live in Florida with lots of sun and it will pay for itself ($22,000 DIY)
3. The "transmission" distance from my panels to my usage is about 100'
4. I went with solar to be self sufficient
Sounds like an ideal setup for your location - I'm looking into something similar but with a windturbine + batteries. I'm in windy scandinavia 😄
@Glen Spivey Its hard to say exactly as utility rates continue to climb and part of our power savings is from conservation. I would guess about 12-15 years total. We are already 6 years in so maybe 8 more years. That said, saving money or the environment is not the primary goal.
Final assembly may be done in the US, but the really dirty components are typically made in china. And while I do understand why people go offgrid, economics, reliability etc, it is ultimately a politically caused problem and poeple going offgrid is sadly a net negative for the environment.
Panels need maintenance and replacement. How self-sufficient can you really be?
I think one major appeal to solar is that it is utilizing current unused space like rooftops and they financial payout is realistic on solar being you can install a system for 15k. Wind on the other hand is a bit more ugly and most home owners don’t want a windmill in their backyard. Granted I am coming from a homeowners perspective and not a mass project prospective but that is why I am drawn to solar more.
This makes sense for large deployments. Solar can be installed on a house roof. Wind can't easily be installed on a per household basis.
Wind depends. With small permanent magnet generation system using vertical axis turbines that generate electricity at lower wind speeds, a lot of advancements are being made. I used to live in a house in which we wired up a 12 volt lighting system, and a system like this would have made a lot of sense. We could also have scaled up a little and had an inverter to run a wash machine and other stuff.
On a solar farm, panels are professionally maintained. On residential rooftop installations, maintenance is at the whim of the home owner. Leaves in the fall? The constant accumulation of dust and pollen reduce efficiency. Can the homeowner maintain the panels or do they have to hire someone. In either case, there's the possibility of deferred maintenance. If there is no maintenance, by Year 7, there efficiency is basically down to nothing.
one thing to consider is that wind and solar complement each other in terms of seasonal power generation.
solar tends to do better in the summer, wind tends to do better in the winter. so coupled they sort of even out power production over the year.
Doesn't counter his killer point that solar is usless at night, even in summer. Even on just seasonal they don't even out at any given location - Towards the poles peak power demand is for heat during the winter & towards the equator it is for air conditioning almost all of the time but especially during the summer. Fossil fuels and nuclear are equally efficient day or night, summer or winter.
@@SmileyEmoji42 absolutely true
@@SmileyEmoji42 Sure, solar could be useless at night but isn't at the moment. Solar complements hydro diurnally as solar complements wind seasonally. Of course one can argue that electricity isn't consumed correctly at the moment with an unnecessary decrease in demand at 23-07 that isn't reflected in the supply of nuclear (or any other thermal) plants and wind parks. But I don't entirely like that argument.
@@mattihalme81 Your "complementary" technologies are not, in fact complementary. Pumped hydro is not and never can be big enough to smooth out any significant amount of solar production. There are very few suitable locations compared to the worlds population distribution and powre usage. Wind does have some seasonal variation but that isn't the problem. Whilst the sun will rise every single day there can be days, weeks or even months without any significant win at all.
Solar works just fine in the UK and in Germany. With home-solar there are zero transmission losses, and the network as a whole is more stable due to excess power being fed back in, as well as being more resilient. Solar water heaters are also popping up like mushrooms on roofs all over the EU. Then factor in that many southern EU households can easily power their entire homes most of the year from solar, and it's undeniably useful, both economically as well as strategically.
The Germans have built 200% solar/,wind capacity of the PEAK consumption, and yet manage to only get under 50% utilization. They still need natgas plants, this is why they are in a pickle. Hundreds of billions spent. Had that money gone into nuclear, the Germans would be able to heat every home with electricity and still export power to other countries. Every northern country that has implemented a FIT program for solar and wind has caused electrical rates to go up even higher. The truth is what comes out of people's pockets.
"With home-solar there are zero transmission losses, and the network as a whole is more stable due to excess power being fed back in"
Networks are less stable when excess is being fed back when peak generation is already happening. I imagine there are zero transmission losses when there is zero generation though.
@@wisenber Absolute horse-sh*t: are you being sponsored by Gazprom, by any chance?
@@joehodgson2815 Ironic of you to bring up anything about horse excrement, with your suggestion being full of fertilizer.
The problem with wind (and advantage of solar) is that you can't really efficiently downsize it. So personal wind turbines (while already available) will always be much less efficient than big size wind turbines. So if you want a bit of independency from the grid, solar (combined with a battery) is usually looking better than wind.
No advantage at all.
Solar is not realistic for individual because the moment everybody would want it the price would shoot up and the availability simply would not b viable.
@@bighands69 Haven't we seen Demand Issues eventually solved by Increased Supply? I'm thinking televisions, computers and smart phones.
solar works better than you would expect in Germany. still only part of the puzzle but it is viable
Solar can only the scaled to the anticipated need and the available daylight. A .5m panel to power an external light in a north state is fine. Try to power a refrigerator, a water heater, a space heater, and a computer or two in winter. The size of the solar panels needed would cover several rooftops at least.
thinking that powering a home and storing overnight is beneficial ecologicaly or economicaly for the individual or society is a bit desilusionnal (except in a weird place where the cost of electricity would go absurdely high).
It's a bit like when Mao ordered every subject to produce iron in their back yard, the productivity was low and the quality abyssmal. "electricaly independent homes" imply subpar solar exposure in most individual cases ( except if one live in an arid place with a full south roof with perfect angling for your lattitude and no masking) and a gigantic waste of materials for the stationnary battery that is not used for vehicles. So no th"problem" with wind is not a problem it's the logical evolution for economies of scale and reaching new wind "deposits".
Rooftop solar is actually pretty great. It makes no noise, kills no birds, shields the building from heat, doesn't spoil the view, imposes no transmission costs and is maintenance-free for decades. In combination with a home battery it can reduce peak power that the grid must be layed out for. The carbon dioxide associated with the production of solar panels is offset in three years - and even sooner where they replace coal-generated power. In short, rooftop solar is an excellent complement to the, indeed amazing, wind turbines we are currently peppering the North Sea with.
Solar makes sense on the roof of your own home, perfect collocation. Assuming you live in a sunny place of course
Zeihan always brings explanations that are relatively detailed and complex while still being easily digestible to the average layperson!
I appreciate your honest accessment of the green techs. So much of what I see is basically propaganda from both sides. I'm looking for truth
I’m living on the sunny west coast of Ireland, the charge going into my Nissan Leaf is equal to the charge coming from the solar voltaic panels on my roof as we speak, it’s 11.12am, I got a government grant for the panels.
And one of the windiest countries in the world.
The oceans have no wind blockage and in places it never stops blowing. Solar has problems but they I think are solvable. I retired from the local power company (Orlando Florida) . They are moving to solar farms and in the process of retiring the coal fire units. Combine cycle plants are used at night and at peak load. This is going to be a step by step process. And multiply solutions will be used.
And after all is said and done, will the grid be more robust or more fragile? I really don't know but I am skeptical that "renewables" will ever cover base load.
@@gomertube The grid is a connected to many generation stations. None of them are really 100 percent reliable. But together they are reliable. As soon as the power storage problem is solved and it will be, too much money to be made not to, the age of fossil fuels will be over.
@@stephencullum8255 I think that one of Peter's key points was that renewables simply aren't viable in many regions of the world, especially when transmission costs are considered. Those places will always need either fossils or nukes. Maybe there'll be a market in FL, but even where I live in the panhandle my municipality has 30 days a year without solar power generation. 30 days is long enough time to kill us all off!
People who criticize Nuclear Fusion research claim "just put down solar, the sun is our Fusion Reactor". Magical Thinking.
Yes, but the same for people who oppose established nuclear technology.
I know my spouse will watch you just because of he loves these views and hikes avidly. Thank you.
Who thinks we should put solar panels where it isn’t sunny? I live in LA where it’s almost always sunny and you can barely find solar panels anywhere. Also, our peak energy consumption is in the middle of the afternoon when the air conditioning is running full blast…because it’s sunny.
The Germans and Canadians and many others in Europe etc. seem to think that it's a good idea to put solar panels in high lattitude countries (weaker daylight strength, long cold winters with very short days). These are some of the situations that can technically repay the financial cost of installing solar panels, but are probably not offsetting the initial carbon cost of production over their lifetime.
@@davidbarry6900
how do you know they are "probably" not offsetting initial carbon cost?
do you just guess? or have a hunch?
@@ursodermatt8809 did you actually watch Zeihan's video?
@@davidbarry6900
no i did not watch his video. i just write some random comments here.
just because zaihan says something that is not necessarily proof that it is fact.
Daily Zeihan. My favorite 3-6 minutes every day 😊
You’re absolutely right about wind. I’m in touch with several mechanics who work on wind turbines. Usually they are installed where the wind analysis tells where the most sustainable wind speeds will be and usually top of mountains are the best spots and they are not using agricultural lands. Unfortunately a wind turbine is huge and there is no way for a helicopter to get it up a mountain. So they must dig an very large access road especially for the swithbacks. And then they have to clear up the land to 100 meters around the designated spot for the crane. The amount of money invested in the road should access a lot of wind turbines for financial amortization. So when we install 20 or 30 wind turbines on a top of a mountain, it’s an environmental disaster at first.
Then you must know that there are mechanical issues each week for a group of more than 20 turbines and sometimes the oil contained in the head leaks a lot so there’s another disaster. The oil on the top of the mountain gets into the springs and you know the rest of the story.
You’re actually in a pristine location, imagine that the government tells you that they will install wind turbines in the sierras !!!!! 😮
That is what is happening in a lot of places in North America.
Be safe and appreciate the tops of our mountains before it’s too late.
Clean coal, nuclear, natural gas and renewable were it is easy could really make a large difference for many countries. That should have been Germanys' approach but in doing that they would not have had as much success with their manufacturing but they may have then focused on high end value manufacturing that is hard to achieve but the Germans could have done it.
Older wind turbines use a decent amount of oil for their hydraulic systems, that’s why you see oil leaking out of those old turbines. Even the older turbine components however have long lifespans. The gearbox oil of most turbines has a lifespan of 10 years if filtered properly. It sucks filtering all that oil because it’s time intensive but thought and care has been invested into using as little oil as possible.
A lot of early WTG designs that were used in the 00’s were actually engineered in the 80’s, maintenance is far more streamlined on newer towers, they’re run using electric motors instead of hydraulic systems.
There are 50 7.2 MW Turbines being installed in a park south of where I work. The peak output of the park will be about 360 MW and run by 8 or so techs. The park I work at has 240 WTG’s and our peak is 400MW and it takes about 30 of us plus contractors to keep them running.
The advancements over the last decade have been staggering. Those 7.2 MW turbines use a fraction of the oil our 1.65 turbines do, and where it is used it generally is very long lifespan lubricant.
Also an environmental assessment is conducted yearly at most parks, if you’re leaking that much oil, you made a huge mistake, and you’re going to get clobbered by the EPA in fines. The oil we pull from towers also has a chain of custody and it is processed and recycled. Of course burning coal and oil is several orders of magnitude more damaging to the environment and humans need energy, so you gotta make tradeoffs. It certainly doesn’t mean the industry isn’t innovating or trying to do better, however.
@@riley8929
Yes you’re totally right, there will always tradeoffs. I visited as a physicist Langley tokamak in the 90s. At that time the pledge for making energy from nothing was strong. But now with the international energy race, maybe we’ll see some important discoveries that will change the world forever, for the good or the worse.
Take care.
That reminds me of a funny story. I'm a civil engineer, who used to work in wind energy back in the 1990s. For the past 20 years I've been working for engineering consulting firms, mainly in transport and municipal engineering. Around 15 years ago our firm had a contract with a promoter developing a wind-farm who asked us to estimate the BOP cost (balance of plant, in other words, all the access roads, collection system, foundations, etc.). The wind farm was under tender, and because it was a lump sum tender, the promoter needed us to estimate the cost of the BOP so they could evaluate if the tenders were fair. So this meant that we had to estimate over 100 kilometers of gravel access roads in less than a month, and do it without contacting anyone about the project (because it was under tender). One of the wind turbines was sited at the summit of a steep hill, that was almost a small mountain. I had no idea how to estimate that site, so I made the assumption that the peak of the hill would be dynamited to create a flat platform large enough that there was enough room for all the cranes installing the turbines, and the dynamited rock would be crushed and used to make ramps and other access roads. It was a fast-track project, so we didn't have time to think too much about it, and I assumed that the eventual contractor would find a more intelligent solution.
About a year later, when the wind farm was under construction, I ran across the promoter and asked him how the contractor solved the problem of the turbine at the peak of the steep hill. He told me the contractor dynamited the upper third of the hill to create a flat platform, and crushed the dynamited road to make ramps and access roads, just as we had estimated it. I guess sometimes the dumbest solutions are the best.
I wasn't going to listen when I first saw the email, glad I did. I've got one thing on my list right now, run accross Mr. Thomas on an RV'ing trip. I'm now adding another: running across Mr. Zeihan on an off-trail hike.
Thanks for thinking of the view...beautiful.
The attraction of solar is individuals can generate enough to power their own home and store in batteries overnight. At the micro level, wind is only a supplement not an alternative.
Speaking from well north of the US border, I will give you the attraction, but with the caveat that it is only cost effective if you forgo grid tie completely (rural or remote properties) and have no need for heavy currents to do work, things like say welding, machinery, even ventilation for barns. On the other hand, if you just need intermittent lighting for an outbuilding you can save a fortune compared to trenching and laying cable.
Like real estate, wind power is dependent on location, location, location. You can store wind energy in batteries as well as ener4gy from solar panels.
Wind is also location dependent, and it depends how you do it. There seems to be a lot of micro scale advancement with vertical axis wind turbines using permanent magnet generators that will create power at much lower speed than larger scale wind turbines. That seems pretty promising.
If you have a 12 volt system with an inverter, wind may be a good solution for a low power setup. But again, your mileage (based on tech and location) may vary.
What you call an attraction I call a crutch. Humanity lived quite well before the invention of electricity and all of the now assumed necessary gadgets. I've lived in homes that experienced regular 42C highs without electricity and have been perfectly comfortable. More comfortable, in fact, than I am in what most consider vastly more luxurious digs. People have been dumbed down to such a degree they can no longer function without their so-called "conveniences". They are completely unaware what was given up in this transformation. An analogy that comes to mind is the person who has the requisite knowledge, skills and abilities to cook a simple hamburger from real and fresh ingredients. That person is unlikely to see a McDonald's hamburger as food. It's food-like. I can come up with many more examples of how modern "conveniences" are in fact merely whitewashed iterations of cheap plastic knockoffs.
Domestic solar energy is minimal and the amount of batteries, solar panels and wiring/switching that has to be done just makes no sense. It simply is not a good alternative to micro level anything.
A friend of mine worked for a NGO in Africa..they used solar and wind power generators they worked for small projects ..but that’s it .
You can’t run a steel mill or anything of an industrial scale to provide an efficient electricity to grow an economy.
Renewables are stop gaps ..period .
Not stop gaps exactly, just not the overall solution.
Once again, Peter makes absolute sense. A pleasure to listen to logic over hype. Never trust salespeople pushing a product.
Actually, almost everything he said, and this is wrong. For example, peak energy at night? No! Peak energy is during the daytime when businesses and corporations are running. It’s why the power company actually gives you incentives to do things like laundry at night. It’s lotta power from your local power company is cheaper at night. Peter got so much wrong in this video. He is not an energy expert. And this video is exhibit one! What we should be doing is using natural gas as we transition into nuclear. Then 50 to 100 years in our nuclear will be replaced by something else. When solar or ancient technology. They’ve been around forever. They’re great small scale at the micro level, but not at the macro.
he's part salesman for sure
I climbed up there in the late 1970s. Still just as beautiful in the Sierras!
Like your videos but would like to see reference's to the numbers on the Solar carbon footprints. Solar on my house charges my battery, for 9 months of the year it powers the house 24 hours a day, including A/C in the summer (Spain so its hot) The panels will be there for 20+ years, that is about 220 MWh of electricity. From what I can Google that's approximately 95 tons of Co2 avoided.
Solar should be CO2 neutral within two years. After that you are golden.
Why do you want to limit CO2? Plants need it. We are in a CO2 famine btw
I question the environmental catastrophe that Peter claims PV manufacture can be. He did say "if done wrong", but literally anything can be an environmental catastrophe if done wrong enough.
@@incognitotorpedo42 If done well, solar panels have merely a large carbon footprint. If done in typical less-developed countries (where most are actually made), they have a very large carbon footprint.
The ultimate flex: voluntarily competing for viewers' focus with such breautiful backdrops.
We do both in Australia. 23% renewables.
In the UK we are running a cable from Morroco to the cloudy UK. There are solutions.
Nice background - Peter says, "Wind is great." There certainly is a mystique about the great sailing ships of the past. "And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by; And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking, And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking." Some day they may write poetry about old wind generators. I think the options that can be built any where and take little space will overtake wind in the next iteration.
The important thing to look at is the slope of trend lines. Costs for solar are continuing to drop. Recyclability is continuing to improve. As are efficiencies. We continue to see ROIs drop allowing smaller installations to become more interesting as well as less sunny geographies. Batteries are improving incredibly fast and the storage and grid stabilization benefits are becoming attractive. Highly distributed generation is helpful for both reliability and reduction in line loss. We are right in the middle of a significant technological transformation and technology and capital allocation is still being sorted. So it is a bit unfair to dismiss solar in the middle of a massive transformation. It’s like dismissing computers when the digital age was just getting started in the 60s and 70s.
Bingo. Many people criticize the use of battery electric vehicle as being carbon-intensive (thus bad for the environment). It's certainly true.
However, as you say, "slope of the trend line" says that electric batteries are rapidly becoming eco-friendly, even if they're not there yet. Internal combustion is a mature technology, it can only improve marginally. But BEVs, much like solar, are emerging technologies: as they quickly improve, they will become beneficial in the future, even though they're polluting right now.
Solar is largely made with Chinese slave labor. That's how you get costs way down. Sad and sick.
Looking at trends lines is kind of a red herring. The biggest drop in cost per unit of solar is from economies of scale when China entered the production market for both panels and batteries. That has some pretty big drawbacks. They're literally what the video is about. There are other reasons that cost per unit dropped, but they're dwarfed by that one factor. It's not that this is a completely invalid way of looking at the market, its just that when the contexts of why are stripped out its misleading to the point of being counterproductive. There are some genuine improvements in performance and production but they are still nascent and looking at trend lines alone will lead to incorrect conclusions.
Except when you back check the trend lines and see that the cost curves are holding which they are. Chinese labour is no longer cheap. Lowest labour cost geographies are now Vietnam Cambodia and Bangladesh. Low labour cost provides value when you are at small to medium scale. But once you get to massive scale only automation can create an acceleration to lower cost. At massive scale, labour cost becomes less important as cost lines approach closer to raw materials and transportation costs. This is where we are now with solar panels. Chinese labour costs are becoming a non issue though yes they had an impact at first.
Also I think that Peter does a lot of business with oil companies. I’m not sure he’s really current with the state of solar and batteries from both an economical and two perspective or if he’s even aware of the current scale of deployment which is becoming massive.
Here for the scenery 😊
Love your work Peter! almost finished all 4 books of yours.
"weeeeell", is the best response. As always, thank you Peter!
Fact check this please. Multiple sources cite LCA's conducted on PV panel embodied energy paypack suggest anywhere from 1.5 - 7 year payback depending on location and methodology. Call it a pessimistic 10 years and that is still 1/3 their projected lifetime. That includes the northern latitudes such as in the UK. I think Peter might have got this one wrong.
yes, worst of all he keeps regurgitating this. it is like he has a vested interest by the fossil industry to repeat that propaganda.
now i would think before spouting things he look into it a bit more than just repeating.
You are living my dream. Geopolitics, outdoors and hiking.
Case in point.
I have some solar panels that I used to put in my windows to charge phones, batteries etc. Then I moved to Northern Scotland.
I get about 3 hours of medium serviceable sunlight per day for charging, in ONE window, and only at the height of the WINTER.... because the sun comes in practically horizontally first thing in the morning, as the sun doesnt get very high during the day. Anyone using solar up here frankly needs them on a gimble, like a radar dish, tracking the sun, and even then you will get poor performance.
There are, however, wind turbines EVERYWHERE. There are about twenty scattered around the vicinity of my town and Im in the middle of nowhere.
I lived in Ravensthorpe in SW Western Australia. Solar and wind were always on song. Had to move back to Perth, but solar here is brilliant. Where I live wind would be great too, but the noise would likely annoy the neighbors 😕
In hot places, it is sunny when it is the hottest. When AV blows full blast.
You are the one mentioning that before so I don’t understand why now the argument go a 180 turn 😂
I still wanna see the airport petting zoo...
6:10 "...the Green Movement in many cases is causing more damage than help."
Would love to see an episode on Quaise (the MIT spinoff going after geothermal that would be installed in existing decommissioned coal/gas plants)
I agree. After 40 years in the electric utility industry, the deep geothermal proposed by Quaise looks like the most promising solution to reliable carbon-free energy.
@@davekral7274 Unless one of the non-Tokamak fusion projects manages to short-cut to a commercial fusion solution, such a geothermal is really the only new, feasible option. Fingers crossed 🙂
@@cabanford Even if that miracle did occur, the capital cost of a fusion plant would be so much greater than a geothermal plant it wouldn't be economical.
@@davekral7274 You're thinking of the Tokamak design. There are a bunch of other concepts that use completely different approaches that *might* work far more quickly and cheaply. Give the scene a quick Google search if you're interested
Sounds like a scam.
Just throwing in a fun fact: Despite the popular perception that Texas is politically not a let's say "greentech-embracing" state, especially considering much of its GDP comes from oil & gas, it has by far the most number of wind turbines in the U.S. It's current count is around 17,000! While the second-most number is Iowa at around 7,000.
Though you say solar can never be part of peak demand, you seem to have forgotten about air conditioning. In the sunbelt, solar power generation dovetails almost perfectly with the demand for air conditioning. The electrical utilities certainly understand this, hence the development of huge solar arrays. Regardless, great job on the video!
That is just pure fantasy at best.
Wind and solar or ancient technology. They’re not efficient. And they’re not green. They are not net green. We should be using natural gas as we transition to nuclear and then 50 to 100 years from now. Something else will replace nuclear. Maybe. There is so much wrong with wind and solar. It’s not even funny. They are great at the micro level at the individual level, but anything even remotely scalable is ridiculous. Peter gets so much wrong in this video. I like the guy, but he’s completely wrong when it comes to power. Go watch some videos with Michael Shellenberger and Robert Bryce.
When it is too hot, the efficiency of solar panels crashes. That's a problem for air conditioning.
I've seen this work very well on large temperature controlled warehouses in California. The PV contribution during peak cooling need often makes the building net zero need wrt grid supply, which is a huge coup.
" In the sunbelt, solar power generation dovetails almost perfectly with the demand for air conditioning. "
It doesn't really. Peak demand tends to be in the evening when people come home from work.
"The electrical utilities certainly understand this, hence the development of huge solar arrays. "
Electric utilities understand that they are mandated to have a specific percentage capacity coming from wind or solar in order to avoid being penalized. For a utility, it is more cost effective to have fewer sources rather than switching between sources and having to project how much they'll need on a daily basis.
I hope you stay warm tomorrow!
I would argue that solar still works in those places but not for every application. Like in Boston you can power a single family home (and then some) but yes you can’t power an apartment complex, factory or corporate building.
Depends where you get the solar panels. Look at Canadian Solar for example
Hello from Denmark :)
The environmental agency is currently investigating pollution pertaining to wind turbine production due to a huge spike in toxic sea foam containing PFAS pollution on the Danish west coast. This is most likely caused by the offshore wind turbines shedding fluoropolymers into the ocean.
The findings of this investigation has the potential to be very damaging to the Danish windmill industry.
Furthermore, the wind turbines are usually not generating power when it's windy due to bottlenecks in the German transmission grid.
Storage and transmission is the real issue when it comes to wind energy. It really needs to used on a local loads such as factories and so on.
The actual maintenance of offshore wind turbines must be insane and a lot of Enron level accounting is probably taking place.
You will hear the term peak energy which is a very clever way of saying that they get enough energy for a short period of time that they then present as being the whole time.
@@bighands69 Or the grid needs to be built to suit. Like it was when generation capacity was built near coal, gas, hydro sources in the past
The authorities are looking at many potential sources for pfas, therefor also windfarms, but this dosen't mean that there is special expectation of finding high levels of pfas comming from windfarms, as pfas isnt directly used in production. A more likely candidate for pfas in the north sea are wastewater and oilrigs where it is used extensively. On a side note, some solar panels have pfas coatings, but I don't know to what extend it can leak to the environment.
Thanks for the thoughts and for the view! Definitely worth the hike.
You should start a travel channel. 😁
I won't subscribe to it :D nice background is ok.
There’s one thing you missed. Solar panels have no moving parts and will last 30+ years with no maintenance. The solar panels on Voyager (which was launched in the 70’s) were still working when we lost contact with it. The best use case for solar is for sub- and ex- urban areas which are highly inefficient to service with a conventional grid. We’re already seeing this in developing parts of Africa and Asia.
They'll be dead in 7 years without maintenance. You have to clean them regularly, dust, pollen, leaves, etc. Essentially after storms you need to clean them, after long periods of dry weather you need to clean them, to the tune of four or so times a year or more depending on where you live, and you should have them inspected every single year. Just throwing them up and leaving them will cause issues.
@@ZackaryMusgrove Are you the guy that cleans all the mars rovers panels? Imagine washing your car a couple of times a year and calling that maintenance 😂 also they’re not going to die if you don’t clean them, just produce slightly less energy. I have an off grid cabin With panels I haven’t touched in 5 years. They work fine and are relatively clean thanks to a miracle I like to call RAIN!
Solar panels have maintenance, cleaning. If it’s coupled with a battery system, it has lots of maintenance involved. The inverter has maintenance too.
Also, every year you’ll lose ~1% efficiency from the panel, even faster in areas where panels operate under hot conditions. Not sure of the exact science of why it happens, but it does.
Everything has maintenance, it’s an ongoing battle against entropy since the dawn of time.
@@zinithin-8208 you’re being pedantic. Of course everything degrades over time. What I’m saying is the tiny degradation they experience over time seems miraculous when compared to other mechanical systems like wind turbines. Can you point to any wind turbines that are still operating after 50 years of no maintenance?
future of solar is thin film. doesn't require smelting silicon ingots. costs a fraction of traditional silicon. multijunction & perovskites pushing 40% efficiency in lab. peter is a couple years behind the curve on his solar tech knowledge. still only works in daylight though, he right about that.
I've seen a lot of progress on that from the Aussies, but still Peter is correct when taking about the prevalent technology, and how China hoovered up that entire market for it's state champion businesses. Will they do the same for tech developed down under? IDK. Still lets hope it all ends up scaling up as well or better than the prevailing silicon tech has.
Of all the great backgrounds you have shown, Yosemite looks the most magical!
Thanks Peter! 🙏🎄
New fan , pushing your popularity up another fraction 😂.
I have learned so much about our planet from your knowledge and perspective on other channels.
Really appreciate your insight and effort. 😎
Merry Christmas from Aussie Downunder 🎄
There is usually more wind at night, and obviously more sun during the day.
But the world rotates, and Northern and Southern hemispheres face the sun periodically.
I can put Solar panels on my roof, and a Battery Megapack by the side of my house, BUT I can't really put a 200 ft. Wind-mill by the side of my house. There is talk of Geothermal energy, being inexhaustible, and now accessible.
But holes in the ground that deep, can quite easily become Volcanoes.
I still believe in Solar personally, but topping up with Wind power.
Britain at the moment building the biggest wind farm on the Dogger Bank in the middle of the North sea. No environmental impacts, and it's far enough away to be almost invisible, and ships know enough to keep away from the Dogger Bank !
Looks like a win-win situation.
Ther we can all get free power for our electric vehicles, using under-road wireless charging systems,(the same system that our phones use, but larger).
Classic wind power also doesn't work in most of the big city locations due to disturbance in the wind flow. Transmission and storage are key issues. The copper requirement will become an issue for wind turbines regardless. Lets also not forget those Wind turbine blades are not recyclable, use toxic epoxies, and are HUGE.
That is not true. Wind turbines on top of buildings, along with other structures have been showing improved output year after year. Cost is another thing, but it is certainly doable with enough investment. The technology is there.
The traditional massive turbines won't work obviously, but to say wind energy has no place in urban centers is just false.
@@wilhelmheinzerling5341 Your ignorance is glaring. What do you know of laminar air flow and the how reliant horizontal access wind turbines are on it? Any idea why so much effort is being put into alternative forms of vertical axis wind power generators? It's specifically because of the disruption to wind flow caused by urban landscapes.
Read a little. The DETAILS matter.
Wind blades are recyclable, it just costs more than the return gained. so no one does it. Currently the #1 way blades are "recycled" is to burn them as fuel for concrete production, reducing emissions as much at 27% and recovering the energy put into the manufacturing. The fibers can then be seperated, ground, and used as fillers in the same concrete. Currently every OEM for blades are working on thermo-plastic blades- for recycling. Epoxy and polyesters are thermo-set plastics (cant be remelted and reformed) so separating the materials is very energy intensive.- Either ovens or chemical baths. Denver has a national laboratory that is building prototypes with this resin (called Arkema Elium) There's some stock advice for ya!
In that note couldn’t NYC be powered by off-shore wind farms?
Had no idea of all these wonderful facts about wind.
Nuclear is better. Ironically it's the environmentalists that have stopped us getting sustainable energy. Thanks. I enjoy these little updates!
Solar works in remote locations, if you have natural gas to run the refrigerator and stove, plus regular gas for the water pump.
Then you still need quite a bit, even fit basic lights and a few electronics.
I'd be interested in hearing a deep dive into modern nuclear reactors and the politics behind their slow adoption.
Not enough kick-backs to the "renewable" (that'll be the unreliable, unrecyclables) faction...........
The green lobby backed by fossil fuel companies.
You won't be able to carbon tax the nuclear energy like other forms, so the governments and banks don't like it.
@@kokofan50 Here in the U.K., landowners related to politicians have been major beneficiaries of substantial grants for years, a former P.M.'s father for instance......
Bullseye, let’s get on with repowering existing coal/oil/gas/(manure?) fueled generators with thorium molten salt reactors. They can consume existing nuclear waste and reduce its half-life significantly, solving multiple problems simultaneously. Their off-peak power can be diverted to producing clean hydrogen or desalination of water. Nothing to not like. Oh, and did I mention the production of medical isotopes?
I'm officially jealious...you're doing it...and fair play to you.
You're a great role model....just for the record, someone should say it to you.
Love the analysis and the views...can't wait of the holiday channel.
The carbon footprint of wind is in the pylons and posts and lines, and the intermittancy which means it has to ALWAYS be backed up by gas generators. you are talking about 70,000 tons piles to anchor the turbines in the sea.
There is an older use for solar power that does not require high tech such as electronics. A couple of decades ago, the US government was offering subsidies to people installing solar heating panels on their roofs. My brother took advantage of this for his building in the suburbs of boston [not a particularly sunny place]. It was basically a large black box full of black pipes, cold water went in one pipe, and preheated water went out another to the building's hot water tank. The energy saving was not in the panels, but in reducing the energy required to heat the water in the tank. During non-sunny days the effect was minimal, but during sunny days the saving was noticeable, and my brother noted substantial savings from mid Spring to mid Autumn. In hot, sunny places like the Middle East, water tanks on the roof produce water hot enough to make tea, and an egg can be cooked on the metal surface of a car left in the sun. If the purpose of solar collectors is to reduce the effects of burning fossil fuels on the environment, reducing the use of fossil fuels and electricity from fossil fuels to heat water seems advisable.
Two-stage geothermal appears to be making a lot of progress in making small-scale power generation accessible without polluting, killing wildlife, or taking up vast tracts of land. It also allows geothermal power to exist away from the normal requisite hotspots, and has the advantage of being active 24/7. I'm very interested in this.
It is very resource intensive to build geothermal stations.
I just listen to a Podcast (Nate Hagen's The Great Simplification), where they discussed Deep Geothermal as a potential to be a truly renewable resource. It's not intermitent, like wind and solar and it wouldn't require new panels/turbines every 15-25 years, like wind and solar. The problem is we don't have the tech to drill that deep, but we are getting close and the largest drilling companies in the world are heavily investing in it. It has a lot of potential and hopefully we'll be able to get it operational and beginning scaling it this decade.
@@kratomsucks the price can go down, the problem is being very restricted by geography
There’s very few places in the world where it would be feasible to do, if at all. You can only drill so far down into the ground which is a pretty big capital investment.
@@senhox970 Currently, you are correct. We are restricted by geography, however, a ton of drilling companies are investing in building the tech to drill miles into the earths crust. They believe that capability will come online this decade. When that happens, the geographic restrictions go away, as we'll be able to drill deep enough to tap into Geothermal anywhere on earth. Don't take my word on it though. Listen to an expert on this podcast - www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/38-sebastian-Heitmann. Specificallly, you can fast forward to the 41st minute and that's where they get into the specifics.
I live I South Australia and we have some days where the whole state is powered by renewable energy. Both solar and wind work very well here!
But we've been at it for more than 25 years!
Time is the next thing to talk about Peter...
Any thoughts on wave power? Apologies if you’ve already covered this
It's great in theory but completely unscalable.
Well.. ua-cam.com/video/nCrTsWtPVIY/v-deo.html
It is not done at the moment, due to engeniring challenges. The mass of water is rough to handle for the equipment. Most experiments of this sort are done at the irkney islands. You can find a few videos abozt that here at youtube.
There's no wave power lobby to pay his speaking fees.
As far as I understand it, there are only a few tidal power plants in existence because the locations that make them efficient are very rare in the world.
Perovskite technology will change the solar equation in the near future. Perovskite cells are more efficient and cost only a fraction of what silicon does, both in engergy cost and materials required.
It is going to be exciting.
Meanwhile, in Germany, it's neither particularly sunny nor particularly windy.
We put in a 17kW solar system at home. Did a ground mount because we have very little south facing roof. We use the power here for the house, and only if/when production is over what the house can use does it go out to the grid (and we have net-metering). That said, we didn’t do for environmental reasons. It was strictly a hedge on rising power costs.
Edit - I’m at 48.5N latitude. And we refused to sign up until the payments were equal or less than the power they offset.
surprised to not hear mention of storage; it seems to me LiPO batteries quickly dropping to commodity pricing with plug-and-play capabilities; I expect in the future so-called "base" demand will be fulfilled by 'spike supply' as the market gets better at rewarding those who can buy the energy while its cheap and use it while its expensive; it's not an engineering problem to solve the supply vs demand curves being out of sync, its a market one
I think most of the batteries people use for electric storage at homes are just lead acid batteries. Weight to power storage isn’t an issue for a home.
Spain was once generating solar after sunset. The subsidies were that good that it paid to run diesel generators and light up the solar panels.
I would pay money to see a discussion (meeting of minds) between you and Tony Seba (RethinkX) on the future of energy production. You are both well versed in the subject, articulate, persuasive, reasonable and diametrically opposed in your conclusions. I think it would be an extremely interesting and enlightening exchange.
I agree I was thinking the same thing as I listened Tony Seba would walk all over Peter Zeihan.I think Peter Zeihan is ignorant about renewables and is googling fossil fuel sites instead of researching
I would actually say doomberg would be an excellent and interesting counter to zeihan on pretty much every issue he raises, and would definetly watch such a debate
@@nickkacures2304 I don’t think it would be a “walk all over”, “WWF smack down” type of event. I suspect each one has an excellent insight into about half of the problem and that a contrasting/comparing/merging of the insights could produce a very clear picture (and hopefully) road map for going forward. At least that’s what I'd like to see.
@@nickkacures2304 Is that the same Tony Seba that promoted self-driving electric cars a few years ago . . . then later said his self-driving car didn't self-drive correctly? There's a major difference between naive theory and real-world practicalities and costs. Zeihan deals with the real world.
@@dzcav3 Peter Zeihan is looking in a rearview mirror in fear as all the wrong predictions and mistakes he keeps making catch up and make a fool of him just look at his last video where he has a jesters hat on it’s a good look.Peter Zeihan a self proclaimed historian but Futerist (HeT)
I know Quartzite Peak. Visited nearby multiple times since '72.
I wholeheartedly agree with pushing more wind power. There is a completely unfounded hesitancy to adopt wind farms. Additionally, we should be making wind more accessible for personal use, in the same way that solar is.
Which is better between solar and wind?
Nuclear.
Thank you Peter and merry Christmas in advance in case I lost electricity here in Japan.
In the case of Seattle, while the city itself is not particularly sunny the area 100 miles to the east is.
If you look at the cost curve on PV solar it is truly remarkable. Cost per watt has dropped 99 percent in the last forty years, and there is every reason to believe that curve will continue until "solar panels" are a coating on metal roofs and cost pennies per watt. It is also reasonable to expect the carbon footprint to decrease along with that cost. From all that it is reasonable to expect that at some time in the not so distant future that PV solar will be the cheapest electricity on the market and also the cheapest electricity in history.
Batteries are on a similar but so far less steep cost reduction curve, and again we can reasonably expect that improvement to go on for a few decades at least.
Existing wind power is pretty close to cost with modern natural gas generators, and because of economies of scale wind power is likely to get cheaper faster than natural gas.
Peter seems really pleased with himself today, lol. :)
True, Nordic counties don’t get much sun. In the winter. In the summer our days are 18 h long. Sure, we don’t spend that much power in the summer, but if it allows us to store more water in our hydro power dams, is that not a viable option still?
Days are long in the summer, but the sunlight is still not that strong. This doesn't means solar is useless, but a point I think zeihan gets wrong is when he assumes the average/moderate solar and wind productivity is not enought. He assumes only the best places for solar and wind are good enought, when the moderate productivity is enought to work with.
I understand the tightrope Peter walks being truthful about the realities of green energy. It’s refreshing to hear an influential person who has the ear of policymakers who is brutally honest about the realities of becoming carbon neutral by 2040. I’m convinced that energy rationing is the only way it could happen, and people really don’t understand what that will mean for their quality of life.
These things are just tools in the toolbox. In places wind and solar will provide meaningful and efficient power and in other places they're the wrong tool. We should welcome any technology, well-used, that adds to our toolbox for generating power.
Wow Zeihan this might be my favourite video of yours yet. You're a total inspiration and actually because of seeing your success I've decided to start making videos too! Keep grinding, your hard work clearly pays off!
Yo I'll check your channel out bro!
Joined.. luv Geopolitcal channels
@@reeldeelz2940 glad to have you onboard!
You're an anti-china conspiracy channel posting nothing new, interesting or original. A 20 something with zero credibility, and after 3 demonetized videos with 300 views, you're already asking people to give you money. You're worse than the Chinese govt.
@@julianb1550 WHAT?
THANK YOU… a pleasure to hear quick well formed ideas… about something I totally agree with👍🏼. It’s like a little stocking stuffer Xmas morning. You hooked me with an interview on another channel, then your demographics 3 parter and now you got me for good. Thanks. Happy New Year🎉
If you talk about intermittent renewable energy, you should also talk about battery capacity. Hornsdale Australia has a 150 MWh battery, Dilsen-Stokkem Belgium a 800MWh, both integrated into the electricity grid. This size of battery storage allows intermittent renewable power supply to meaningfully add to the electricity base load generation.
No it doesn't, totally cost uncompetitive, hornsdale's purpose is frequency support, not power. The frequency support is needed because wind and solar are terrible for a grid because they can't supply stable Freq. For stable Freq you need a very large spinning mass, inertia is key. You only get that from fossil fuels, fission and hydro.
With consumption in the tens of GW that means 5-10 min of storage. You have to scale up 100 fold just to get above daily intermittency. Just for a single country that means tens of years of the global battery production. We cannot increase the production capacity by even a factor of 5 with the proven reserve of battery materials. Renewables are a scam, to give relief for the climate anxious. EROEI is the most important number for civilizational progress. Nuclear is the only remotely feasible way out of the climate crisis while maintaining energy consumption.
Only problem with wind turbines is they are not Able to be recycled when they break. We need to work on that part. Coming to you from Colorado with quite a bit of wind power here!
If we make better and best into enemies, then there's no limit to what we can prevent ourselves from accomplishing. Why have them compete when they work great together?
Well said. 👍
You need to include oil&gas, nuclear, coal, hydro, etc. Wind, solar, and battery tech alone will never get us there in an efficient and sustainable way, much less reach our actual overall energy needs - not when the whole picture is considered.
@@ArchimedesPie include nuclear, hydro and others that are small, like geothermal or tide power, but coal,oil and gas are the things we have to get rid of
@Senhox We will never be free of hydrocarbons for all the other things made from them that aren't energy related. A surprisingly high percentage of Oil and Gas (less so for coal) is used in the creation of plastics, pharmaceuticals, lubes, etc. Only a modest percentage is used for fuel. We already create some complex hydrocarbons from biomass, but it's cost prohibitive today. The only practical solution to POWER is nuclear - meaning to generate electricity to run machines, heat homes, and move vehicles, but PRODUCTS will still have to be made from fossil fuels until biomass becomes competitive, either through changes in the supply chains, technology, or scarcity of petrochemicals. Something to remember: the key to the progress of civilization and the end of poverty is the availability of abundant and cheap POWER. This should be one of our primary goals.
@@ArchimedesPie Yes - Germany has used methane both as a fuel source and as a feedstock for its chemical industry. Peter Zeihan has covered how this is impacting the German economy in previous videos. Basically Germany is an overcast and windless place devoid of most natural resources - a lot like Japan.
The world needs storage to make wind/solar intermittency manageable. Things like flow batteries and liquid air power storage are being built out that can store days worth of power when the conditions are good for generation but the power is not immediately needed.
Coal sweet coal
It'd be interesting to see a conversation between Peter Zeihan and Tony Seba.
Yes Wind turbines are fit for purpose in more locations. But Wind turbine field service personnel are reporting high maintenance freq and cost to replace the front turbine bearings on the tallest wind turbines… and taller units are most prone to more frequent lightning strikes.
You need to also consider negative sides: maintenace is high, the blades sometimes need changing - that creates env issues - mostly the just dig the pvc in the ground, the noise is high so locals dont like them, they are killing a LOT of birds, and the noise also creates issues for rain deer (and probably other animals too). The biggest problem is that the wind must be just rigth to effectly create power - thats the problem in europe now - not windy - you better have be have a lot of saving or u’ll freeze.
Some European countries are windier than others ... 🇬🇧
Have you *been* to Portugal?
Hunt Energy in Dallas is invested in Cubicpv which is developing a tandem perovskite on silicon cell. Their silicon is from what they call Direct Wafer technology. I posit that when they begin volume production, Altus will buy them for commercial roofs owned or managed by Blackrock and CBRE.
I saw a TED talk about the environmental impact that wind turbines have in California and I was shocked to hear how many birds are killed every year due to wind turbines.
Would that not be a factor to consider in their impact?
Peter makes a good point about people not putting windmills where it's not windy, but putting solar panels where it's not sunny.
What Peter doesn't mention about wind is that the beautiful scenery that he enjoys so much on his hikes would be RUINED by windmills. And the large birds that soar around the mountains are KILLED by windmills (a federal felony that somehow wind farms are strangely exempt from). Even if the windmills are not directly in sight, if they are nearby, there may well be an ugly, expensive transmission line carrying the electricity from the windmills to where it's needed. Everybody wants green energy until you site a windmill or transmission line in their backyard. There's a saying in the electric utility business that you can't locate energy sources or transmission lines close to any Starbucks coffee shop because the locals will get upset.
There is a social factor that you didn't mention: you can put solar panels on the roofs of buildings and no one has to look at them. The taller a wind turbine gets the more it dominates the landscape. Here in upstate and western New York and likely elsewhere, most of us in our travels have seen the tops of some beautiful hilltops, otherwise wooded and green, become topped off with a line of spinning blades. Nobody wants to see the gorgeous landscapes like the one behind you marred by a string of turbines, but that's where the wind is.
Even with the issue of waste storage, nuclear power is still *by far* the best way to go.
...honestly most people don't care it's the Karens that make a big deal about it... I mean if you can save me money by building wind turbines then let's do it economics always wins out in the end even if there is a better product if one can do the job well enough and it costs less then most people will go that route.
Oil rigs marring the landscape of North Dakota is fine but windmills in Upstate New York is an abomination. NIMBYism at its best.
@@Rob_F8F Whataboutism at its best.
@@ticarot Have you considered that if there were more windmills that there might be fewer oil rigs?
@@Rob_F8F I am pretty sure that most new wind turbines are at least twice the height of the average oil rig though.
I live in Michigan and witnessed a large government subsidized solar farm built in my County.
Much grandeur on celebration when it was brought online.
It was absolutely hilarious to drive by and see all those solar panels encased in a thick layer of snow and ice.
A truly unsolvable situation. Shovels don’t exist in Michigan.
@@losthighway4840 Yes climb up on a ladder and shovel off those glass solar panels, all 2000 of them. Better yet let's install some diesel fuel smudge pots around it.
@@okboomer6201 wow a ladder! A Herculean feat.
@@losthighway4840 Yes you do that. Climb up twelve feet and chip the ice off 600 solar panels when it is five below zero and a twenty mile per hour wind. 🤣🤣💸💸💸💸
@@okboomer6201 I can only climb 11 ft, unfortunately. Only world class alpinists can reach 12 ft.
I'm not warm to wind or solar because there exists an obvious alternative that is available, but is ignored, that would be reasonable in price, and as safe as it gets, with the good news kicker that there is thousands of years of energy in the form of deposits available here in the US. It's thorium and thorium plants could be built as small as a bedroom, and not be the environmental eyesore that wind and solar are. Besides, wind and solar only last a few years before they are useless blights on the landscape that are difficult to dispose of. Thorium has a much longer lifespan. Wind and solar suck in my opinion.
There are other methods that we can use. No one system is the right one. It depends on where you are. And what is best for that area. The is lots of promise to wave energy. Many cities are near the coast. And the ocean moves all the time. As they improve these systems it could be part of the whole cleaner energy along with other methods being tried.
Two-stage geothermal is a very promising advancement, allowing power generation in places far removed from the traditional hotspots we usually associate with geothermal. In addition, it doesn't pollute, doesn't kill birds, doesn't take up massive tracts of land, and is available 24/7.
@@MichaelDavis-cy4ok I know a couple that used geothermal in their home along with passive solar solutions in how they designed their home.
Appreciate the rational logical analysis!
Where are you getting your numbers for solar being 5x more expensive than wind?! The numbers I've seen show utlity-scale PV and onshore wind are both around $45/MWh LCOE. Are you talking average installations, or only looking at the ones where it's always cloudy?
Would be nice to know the sources.
Number one polluter (carbon emissions) on planet earth: Portland cement. 660 cubic yards of concrete per turbine on average. Break even for carbon on manufacturing for the average turbine is 30-35 years; service life is 20 years. I’ve installed a couple thousand utility-scale turbines. Sarita Gulf Wind. Red Hills. All over the place. 1500 miles of transmission line. Wind is a sham when making the carbon offset arguement. Nothing green about it. Would love to have you on our show- 180k subs. Holler at me.
Don't forget about the Giant multi hundred ton cement base under each wind turbine, and the birds killed. The average payback for a turbine is 24-26 years....useful life, 18 years. Happy and healthy to you and your family.
Common house cats kill many order of magnitudes more birds per year than wind turbines.
@@flipper2gv Common house cats don't kill eagles, AND, wind turbines don't give tummy rubs.
@@TSIRNC It still is 234,000 (turbines) vs 2,400,000,000 (house cats) per year. Glass buildings at second place with 599,000,000 per year. Wind turbines aren't really an issue on bird deaths.
That's for the turbine and blades. The base will last much longer.
What about the problem of dealing with the blades when the wind turbine is decommissioned? Right now they have to be landfilled, and very few places will take them.